[Request] : What would I do with the 700SP from @karensuestudios?

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First of all, I’d just like to say congratulations @karensuestudios for breaking through to your very impressive milestone of 3500 followers! You’ve got a lot of great people following what you do and that is amazing to see. It must be a real joy to log in every day and be surrounded by them!

Now… honeydicking over with.

For my Buddies

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I’ve spent the past month on Discord setting up our community BuddyUP and getting to know some amazing people in the process. I just wish I could reward them more for their support and effort!

For anyone starting up a community, you’ve got to be real with your people. Truthful and transparent without creating a negative environment for everyone.

We are on the right track here. The wheels are moving, people are positive and happy, and it’s super exciting to see where we might be in a few months time.

Our community is based on helping each other grow and improve. We have features that require a lot more engagement than some other communities and I know that it’s hard work for some people. I’m not naive to that. It’s not necessarily hard work for myself because I love it(!). I’ve created beliefs for myself that drive me forward to help me give honest and supportive feedback to the people who add some value to my life.

I’ll not go into our features here because that will take up a good chunk of the page (and I know you have a lot of posts to get through!), but I’ll drop it here for when you have the time to check it out.

It’s not a mystery that we require rewards at certain times when we are completing tasks. This is to encourage correct behaviors and to develop strong beliefs. That’s just basic psychology. With the delegation, I aim to reward the members of BuddyUP for their efforts in improvement, so that I can help them build the right values while they are on the platform.

Hopefully, with encouraged behaviors at BuddyUP, we will see a knock on effect in the way that people comment and respond in other communities.

Choo choo!

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Every day, I spend some of my time in The STEEM Engine. I aim to visit 4 people daily, in our promotion train, drop them a comment and a 50% upvote and let them know how I felt about their article in the channel. My vote will continue to be used this way, so it’s not fair to just say that it’s just for the members of BuddyUP.

I massively support The STEEM Engine and I will continue supporting them for the foreseeable future.

There is a lot of people in the group that I am strongly interested in. You can tell how various people are improving, when you drop by to the new post a few days after their last. Giving people an avenue where they have to read and absorb other peoples work is important to our growth. We need to notice what is valuable and what helps us.

The team over there is remarkable and their efforts aren’t taken for granted.

@EnchantedSpirit spends an awful lot of time curating our posts and writing The Daily Whistle Stop and The Inbox Runneth Over, @EthanDSmith puts a lot of effort into managing the place and he also makes a killer podcast and there is a mixture of amazing team members who oversee and run the server.

These guys spend the time, every day, making sure this community is running for us. People are featured and given the chance to be discovered and I think I speak for us all when I say, we are very thankful for having a community like this. Keep doing what you guys are doing, it is brilliant to experience. I'll be supporting you guys all the way down the track.

Anywhere else?

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In fact, yes! As you can see, my voting weight already gets split between a mixture of people and I feel like I’ve got a good method going at the moment to make use of my 200SP. Using Busy.org has helped massively and I’m glad I’ve been able to split up my votes. Another link to a previous article here by me, but again, it’s beneficial for anyone reading who is wondering what I’m going on about. Also, towards the end of this post, I’ve listed the goals I want to achieve by the 31st of March. If you want to swing by to that you can here.

Back to my initial question, yes. There is somewhere else. On Friday, last week, I was scouted by @maverickinvictus to join Promo-Mentors. It's an amazing community that holds very similar values to my own. They also help to improve the other members of the platform. I was approached after I wrote a very personal post about my past, which was prompted by one of the other BuddyUP members. @WhiteWarLike opened the door for me with a simple writing contest. I’m eternally grateful for that.

Opportunity can come from anywhere, you just have to be true to yourself.

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I spoke out the other day, saying how amazing the feeling was when I had been recognized by @maverickinvictus. Putting your heart on the line is difficult, but when someone sees you for you then wants to support your efforts, the joy you feel is something powerful. Everybody on the platform needs that kind of motivation and sense of purpose at some point. We can all do our little bit to make everyone feel that way.

I’ve already gained so much from this group and I’d love to give more back using my vote. There is a lot of brilliant authors in Promo-Mentors. It’s remarkable to see some of the work that gets shared in the feedback sessions and in the various other curation channels. I need to reward these efforts. You can’t just walk by posts like this without showing some form of support.

I’d just like to thank @WhiteWarLike and @maverickinvictus again for what they did for me. It might not seem like much, but it’s been a pivotal point in my Steemit journey.

Any final thoughts?

I’m a strong believer that a thoughtful comment is a lot more valuable than an upvote. This doesn’t mean I don’t upvote. It just means that I leave a meaningful comment AND an upvote.

Having a heavier upvote to show people their worth would mean a lot to me.

There are times where I will leave a lovely comment on somebody's post and I will upvote them with £0.02, or something silly like that. Now, I don’t mind if this happens to me. Someone has shown genuine interest, they appreciate my work and they have voted me up. This doesn't just help my payout it also helps my exposure.

It’s genuine support.

This doesn’t mean that we all think this way. You have to be real and understand that some people are incentivised by money. Until they are not. They stop being incentivised by money when you support them and tell them WHY you support them. WHY you left such a small upvote before, and WHY you leave a heavier one now.

We aren’t robots.

You can’t just expect people to follow a script and not develop patterns and thoughts that make them start believing in detrimental values.

We have a responsibility to motivate and help others into a positive light. That is what I want to do with the delegation from you @karensuestudios. The people around me deserve it.

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This bar is taken from 'https://helloacm.com/tools/steemit/outgoing/' showing my outgoing votes to people between 15/12/2017 - 06/03/2018. I nearly shed a tear when I realised I must of clicked my vote button more than the one time I thought I did. I'll cry myself to sleep tonight.

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I use @smartsteem and sometimes @minnowbooster to upvote my posts. I always wait till 20-30 minutes, and I never vote more than 0.5 STEEM or SBD on my posts.

(Edit: I did today to gain some more exposure for my BuddyUP post for drawing in more users, guilty as charged, 1SBD).

Here is the link to my balance page to save you some time.

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Images taken from Pixabay.com & steemreports unless otherwise stated.

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If you’d like to come and support others and join into our communities, below you can find the links to our Discord servers. We’re looking forward to meeting you!

BuddyUP : https://discord.gg/9b7FtHu
The STEEM Engine : https://discordapp.com/invite/y58rgmY
Promo-Mentors : https://discord.gg/5HTREGU